Dolls
by suncityblues
Summary: "You break it, you buy it." Shizuo x Izaya ; mentions of Naime, Shinra, Celty, and Izaya's sisters.


Title: Dolls  
Characters: Shizuo, Izaya, Naime, mentions of Celty and Shinra  
Rating: nothing explicate  
Summary:

You break it; you buy it.

* * *

Cold hands, cold heart, cold eyes.  
Everything about him is cold and unreachable, even for him.

He is disconnected and confusing, wrapping his jacket around him to protect himself.  
From what? From you? Not anymore.

Things have changed drastically now because everything he was standing on has fallen out from under him. He had never even realized there was a crack in the foundation, his foundation, until it splintered off by his own weight. Until it cracked and fell into the icy ocean and took him with it.

He looks at you witheringly and you have to remind yourself that this person is not the same Orihara Izaya you once knew, hated.

That's happened to a lot of people lately.  
Them not being totally there.  
And it's his fault and you know it but you can't help but not be angry with him.

You see it in their eyes, the look of being vaguely lost. Angry. Alone.  
Their eyes, his eyes, sometimes yours.

And now, now he doesn't run from you until he's sure you're going to chase after him. He doesn't run to you either but just stands there, says something like, "What are you going to do, Shizu-Chan?" With a laugh, he lets you grip him painfully by the arms. Lead him back to your apartment and fuck him, hard.

You're trying to breathe life back into him. You're trying to breathe the life back into this whole damn city.  
And it's his fault, and maybe he knows and maybe he doesn't or maybe he just doesn't care.

You just want to punch him, hard.  
Take him by the shoulders and shake him.  
Hold him tightly.  
Kiss him.

It's no secret how you feel.  
Except maybe to yourself.  
You're surprised he hasn't killed you for it yet.

And part of you likes to think that's proof enough.

But it's not working, not really.  
Or, going too slow for your liking.

Nothing about him was ever slow, that's certain.  
Normal people don't move like that- just him. He weaves and winds and fucks with you at the same time and if you weren't so busy trying to murder him you might have been impressed.  
Probably not though. You've never been much for words and running away.

He still pisses you off like no other.

There's just something about him that makes your brain think: dangerous. Ever since you first met him, you think that.

You still do because he still is, just splintered off and miserable and lazy. The Queen of Hearts. Off with her head, off with her head, and so on and so on.

And the thing that really gets you, is that he won.  
In the end, he really won. He got what he wanted, so you suppose he also got what he deserved.

Things just aren't as they seem, and no one seems to notice.  
You would think that the whole damn city would stop. Even for a moment.  
But that's what got you into this whole mess in the first place, though, wasn't it?

Because now Celty is gone. No one really knows where she went but she has her head and it's awake and so you like to tell yourself that she's happy. Or at least that she remembers who she was without the head. Remembers him. Remembers Shinra.

You don't really want to think about Shinra right now.

Izaya is looking at you, now. His eyes are unreadable, at least to you, not that you have much experience with reading people. He is lounging shirtless with his jacket on and you admire your blue and red handy work.

Beautiful, really.

And, you know, every so often when you're working with Tom or just walking around, you'll spot Izaya on the street or the subway or the store. Sometimes you drag him off with you, and sometimes you chase him through the city, and sometimes you just leave him alone.

Because you're getting older, softer, more tired. You're not that old but in a way this makes you grateful because even though you'll always be stronger that the average person maybe you'll start to seep into normalcy someday. Or something like that.

But it also makes you a bit sad because he won't be with you anymore if that happens. He could never settle in somewhere. Never just be okay. Deal with it, move on. Get older, die. He's a fighter, you suppose. More of a fighter than most, anyway. And he's still just as sharp and even more terrible and angry and sad than he was before.

He's drifting off to sleep now. Still mad at you for the hickey above his collar bone, where he'll have a harder time hiding it. But not that mad evidentially, since he's made no move to get up or shower or stab you or anything.

He's been beating himself into the ground since you've known him, just hiding it under a smile, a sneer, a fur-lined hood and it's getting worse.

But no matter how good he is at concealing it, and he is very good, the edges sometimes stick out and he'll be momentarily exposed and you think, huh, so there is a real person under there, after all. It took you years, years, to realize that. It was what you were looking for the whole time, the one human thing about him. Proof.

But what do you do with this, your proof?

You can't show him because he'd close up again, probably forever considering the time it took to find the first real human thing about him. And you can't do nothing because he's getting more and more muddled and lost, becoming something even he would have hated. More violent, more fearless, more angry. He's going blind with pain and pique.

You think he might actually miss his little sisters even though he never showed much interest in them before.

Or maybe it's guilt, or something you've never felt before.

You just know he's not normal, not himself, because sometimes you'll catch him using his own hands to do damage the old him would have manipulated someone else into doing. To stab with purpose, with intent to kill or maim. You don't know if he's actually ended anyone's life with his own hands yet. You don't want to know.

You never thought you'd miss the old Izaya, either. You never thought you'd be so enamored with this flea, this grime of the earth, this poisonous snake that you'd actually try to bring him back. You never thought you'd be the one to lay at the foot of his bed, loyal, like a dog.

You never imagined he'd kiss you like he does, with ice in his breath where there used to be fire.

His lips are rose petals, pretty and childish and when he sleeps they rest open, just a bit. He'd look like a doll, then, if it weren't for the bruises and bite marks and the way he holds the blanket around him, tight, like a life line.

Maybe he is your doll, then.  
You break it you buy it, after all.

You don't want to protect him but he needs protecting. From himself, from you sometimes, from everyone.

Because he won.  
He won, he won, he won.

And no one would complain if he died, not his family, not the people in his life. No one would be sad. Except you, maybe.

The world didn't end. He underestimated it. The world never even cared.

Because he thought too highly of humans, not realizing how very, very meaningless they were. Never even realized he was playing with all pawns.

He broke everything and came back empty-handed and alone and the world didn't notice, let alone end.

He hurt you too, got you shot, drove a wedge between you and your brother, framed you for crimes, but you realize that what he did to himself was much worse and all for nothing.

So what will you do with the little space of humanity you found on him?

You will use you hands, use your immense strength to pry it open, to see everything. To rip the clothes from his back until he is naked in front of you, and then you will kiss him there, on his cold skin, while he shivers. You will make him warm again, if only for a while.

You want him back.

You never did have a lot of friends. Not that he was ever one but he was something. You never had a lot of somethings, either.

There is a wall between him and everyone he's ever known. You empathize with that wall.

And once, he got drunk or something else entirely and he told you about his mom. He came to you, to your apartment, on his own, for no reason and told you something about his life. How she killed herself right there in the bathtub while he was sitting in the next room with his sisters. And he didn't know why, didn't know what, didn't know why.

And you were happy. Not about his mother but about how you realize you're the best he has and he hates you. About how somehow everything defaults to you. How he managed to make you happy in the strangest way possible.

That was when you realized it. When you found the spot of human on him. The crack. When you realized why he wore such long sleeves even in the summer. Why he tries to get those stupid girls to throw themselves off of buildings.

When you wanted to hold him down and scream:  
what is wrong with you what is wrong with you what is wrong, until he told you.  
Or cried or yelled or did something, anything real.

You're sick of him hiding inside himself.  
You've known him too long to not know anything about him.

Because he is the most confusing person you've ever met. He's distracting and strange and borderline evil. He is in no uncertain terms beautiful.

Fascinating and devastating and powerful.

You want to trust him but you can't. You know that, you don't feel safe around him, but he's given up on you.

He wants to break the world in half, wants to show it what it's missing, want's to make it notice him.

He's given up on manipulating you ages ago. You never do what he wants, he's said, pressed between your chest and the sheets, half awake, half asleep. You don't know what he's talking about and so you just go to sleep.

He's usually never there in the morning.

Even when you're sleeping in his bed he's not there in the morning, relying on a startled and unhappy looking Naime to tell you he won't be back until late afternoon if you really wanted to see him. And that you should put pants on before you go waltzing around other people's offices.

She hates you, you can tell, she hates him too, but seems oddly attached to her job. Maybe some part of her actually likes him, you wonder, but try not to think about it, because if she is, that's her problem and she looks smart enough to know that Izaya can never, ever find out.

You wonder how he does that, gets people to fall for him so easily, and then you get over it.

Because he leaves all the time, but he always comes back.

Because you have it. You have a little bit of his heart, his real heart, in your hand. Because by winning he lost everything except you.

You've been sleeping with him for a long time, trying to kill him for even longer, and it's true you don't hate him anymore but maybe you will still have to kill him after all.

Because his is your porcelain doll. Your responsibility, and if you can't fix him then you're going to have to throw him away.

That's just how the world works.

* * *

I would like to think that no one would die anymore  
if we all believed in daisies  
but the worms know better, don't they?  
They slide into the ear of a corpse  
and listen to his great sigh.

– Anne Sexton, _The Fury of Flowers and Worms_

_

* * *

_

This is very vague and kind of hard to follow, I realize. I promise I'll get back to writing things that make sense starting immediately.

So I am working on a second part of Dead City Radio, but I decided to write this first since I was a bit devastated that I lost all my progress on the sequel because I apparently don't know how to save things.

But yeah, anyway, it's been a while since I've posting anything. I've been doing more original stuff lately. It's pretty terrible; I'm not even going to try and pretend otherwise.

Anyway, hope you liked the fic!


End file.
